MoD forced me to tell lies, claims press officer

British soldiers killed in combat in Afghanistan are driven in a cortege through the town of Wootton Bassett in south west England. Photograph: Toby Melville/Reuters

A military press officer is suing the Ministry of Defence and claiming that he was forced to tell "government lies" to the families of British soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

John Salisbury-Baker, 62, says that his job required him to insist to bereaved families and the media that the soldiers had been properly equipped when they were killed, something he had come to believe was untrue and "morally indefensible".

The press officer will claim that the distress caused by having to defend the safety of equipment such as Snatch Land Rovers and body armour to more than a dozen bereaved families contributed to his being diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and left unable to work.

He is suing his employers under disability legislation, claiming that the MoD failed to make adequate provision for an existing stress illness which, he says, had been accepted by his employers as a disability, and that he was not trained for the family liaison role or offered support. Having to be "frugal with the truth" contributed to his mental anguish, he will claim, in a tribunal expected to sit later this year.

Salisbury-Baker's solicitor, David Gordon, said : "I think what John would say is, 'I was put under an inordinate amount of strain without any backup or training. As things have gone on I have realised that what I was being told was not true, and it appears that that was known at a level above for some time.' We are looking at the gradual erosion of someone's mental state."

Salisbury-Baker began working as a civilian information officer at the Imphal barracks in York in 1996, later being promoted to defence press officer for the armed forces in the north-east, a role that required him to support newly bereaved families in their dealings with the media.

Having signed the Official Secrets Act, he declined to comment , but speaking on his behalf, his partner Christine Brooke said: "John is a father, and going along and seeing the fathers of youngsters who had been killed, obviously he could empathise with that. It took a lot out of him. He was going back again and again where yet another funeral was held, and he found that very difficult to cope with."

In addition, she said, "he felt he was being frugal with the truth. John was reading the papers [about equipment failures], then he might have to go to a family and support them, and he felt that he knew that maybe their son or daughter hadn't been equipped properly. That caused a problem for him." She described the insistence that the equipment was sound as "government lies", adding that he had been forced to "defend the morally indefensible".

Gordon said that his client's stress illness predated his employment by the MoD, but his employers had been aware of it and had acknowledged on a number of occasions that the illness was a disability and fell under anti-discrimination legislation. Though some of Salisbury-Baker's claim dates back to 2001, he said, it was principally after the start of the Iraq war in 2003, when his condition worsened as a result of his contact with bereaved families, that the MoD failed to protect him as a disabled person. Gordon said that the press officer was not offered any kind of training for dealing with bereaved families or counselling when it became apparent that he was struggling, nor was he offered an alternative position. "Knowing that he was vulnerable," he said, the MoD would have been obliged to make decisions that took into account his condition.

He said that Salisbury-Baker, who is still employed by the MoD on reduced pay but has barely worked for over a year, was seeking only the pension to which he believes he would have been entitled. "He wants to leave the service honourably, retire on the package which he was promised and go into private life. He has seen people in the extremes of bereavement – this is not something that he's going to claim [large] damages over. It's not a question of damages as such."

The MoD said it would be inappropriate to comment while proceedings were pending.